My niece married a man who had a 6 yr old son. I made one of these:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QbBbg7sny8

for him to open at the shower.
It was easy and it sounds like it was well received.
His situation was a little different, I just wanted him to feel welcome to our family.

You are a very nice sister! This is just my opinion, but I feel like the gendered color theme for girls and boys is a bit tired and heavy handed. Parents get so much of it, and really there are so many great colors for babies.

Yay... a new baby to make a quilt for! I would make what I wanted to make. All the knitting and crochet is time consuming so I might pass on that. An I Spy quilt for the big brother would be great, but if you don't want to do two quilts you could always just bring him a little toy as a gift when you present the baby quilt.

I wonder if you could find a cute panel and work from there. They generally have several colors in the picture part and you could put small blocks around the edges. Or....you could start on the boy's first.

I agree, I've seen some fabulous quilts for babies that didn't have a speck of pink, or blue. There are a lot of contemporary, baby quilt designs that are very easy piecing and offer up some fresh palettes.

~ C

Do what you can at your pace and when you're in the mood to do it.

An easy blanket would be a soft fleece square with hand blanket stitch all around the edges. Made one for my great grandson and his mother loves it. It was light blue ground with white and Aqua circles.

I really don't mind that she's asked me to make these things. My sister's creativity doesn't venture into the world of needle and thread. Her art is confined to paints - she's an amazing artist, but is all fingers and thumbs when it comes my art.

I'm definately liking the idea of an i spy for her eldest.

When the last baby in the family was born, the gender was left as a surprise. By the time she came I was soooo sick of neutral colours! :) So it would be nice this time to get to play with colour.

I made a whole heap of little crochet jackets for her son, but as with babies, they don't wear well. That, and I didn't use pure wool, only because my sister would simply throw them in the washing machine. A pure wool one wouldn't have fitted a doll after that sort of treatment! But the jackets are super easy, only take a few hours to put one together.

I've roped our mother into helping - she's going to attempt to knit the blanket, or pass it across to her neighbour who knits beautifully.

So now its just deciding on patterns for a quilt...

I agree! Make what YOU want to make for the new baby. Maybe make some of the knitted items now, then make the quilts for Christmas or birthdays.

I made this baby quilt from a book panel. There are a lot of panels there that would work for a baby quilt with various settings (alternate with 9 patch, etc.). You could pick one for boy or girl when you find out, or gender neutral theme like animals or alphabet but select complimentary girl or boy fabrics to go with it. This turns out cute but doesn't take much time. Fabric.com has a lot of panels to choose from. I will say, from experience, I never wash panels before I use them, because they frequently are off kilter after being washed and dried, and then are hard to put into a setting like this.

http://www.quiltingboard.com/picture...s-t197496.html